Friday, April 22, 2011

Felt Hair Clip Tutorial

I fell in love with felt hairclips by paying $10 each for them on the internet... until I figured out how it was done! I will still buy clips if I see something that really grabs me, but with my quirky style sometimes flowers and butterflies just don't float my boat...

So if you would like to make your own felt hairclips you will need:

FELT

Coloured cotton or fabric glue

Plain hairclips

My supplies for making Butterfly a special character themed clip... her hair is growing in her eyes and she only lets me put clips/ribbons in if she REALLY likes them so this is designed especially for her.

So step one: make a stencil and cut out your felt in the desired shape. You will need two of the same shapes to hide the internal clip.

Step two: Sew or glue on the embellishments and align the clip taking into consideration the orientation you want it in your hair

Step three: make a small slit where the bottom part of the clip will emerge (see picture below)

Step four: insert the clip into the slit so that the largest part will be hidden within the felt

Step five: sew or glue your clip together!

These are some of the clips I have made in the past. The ladybug was made using glue, and I think I prefer that to the hand stitched character clip. Hand stitching can be a lovely feature on a flower clip, though! The Australian Flag clip was made with a store bought embroidered patch... same principle, I just cut some felt to match and glued it to the patch!

If you have a daughter that loves cars or dinosaurs, I'm betting you don't see such "masculine" things in hairclips too often! Which sucks. So make your own! Its super easy. The clip above took me around half and hour and that was with me handstitching... if I'd have used glue it would have been ten minutes!